The True American

Starred review from February 10, 2014
Competing visions of the American Dream clash in this rich account of a hate crime and its unlikely reverberations. New York Times columnist Giridharadas (India Calling) follows the encounter between Mark Stroman, a racist ex-con in Dallas who went on a killing spree targeting men he wrongly thought were Arabs after 9/11, and Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi-born convenience-store clerk who was shot by Stroman but survived; Raisuddin later campaigned to spare Stroman the death penalty. Raisuddin’s initiative, inspired by his pilgrimage to Mecca, makes for an affecting story of forgiveness and redemption, but the book’s heart is the author’s penetrating portraits of the two men: Stroman’s violent, bigoted patriotism is a tribal affiliation that consoles the pain of his chaotic upbringing and sense of dispossessed white masculinity, yet it’s Bhuiyan, the immigrant striving to reinvent himself, who emerges as the more iconic “true American.” Giridharadas’s evocative reportage captures the starkly contrasting, but complementary struggles of these men with sympathy and insight, setting them in a Texas landscape of strip malls and gas stations that is at once a moonscape of social anomie and a welcoming blank slate for a newcomer seeking to assimilate. The result is a classic story of arrival with a fresh and absorbing twist.

April 1, 2014
Well-crafted account of an act of post-9/11 vigilante violence and its long reverberations for its survivors. New York Times columnist Giridharadas (India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking, 2011) meticulously reconstructs two lives that collided in horrific fashion. In the charged, angry days after 9/11, self-styled "Arab Slayer" Mark Stroman murdered two immigrants in Texas, while a third man survived being shot in the head during Stroman's spree: Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force veteran, was working at a Dallas-area convenience store as he established himself in America. Stroman was quickly apprehended and sentenced to death; Bhuiyan not only recovered from this harrowing hate crime, but thrived, building a career in IT management. Following a pilgrimage to Mecca with his beloved mother, Bhuiyan decided to channel his sense of good fortune into a social statement, pursuing a late-stage effort to block Stroman's execution and reach out to his children. Although Stroman's sentence was ultimately carried out, Bhuiyan's determination to break what he saw as a never-ending cycle of violence between cultures through an act of forgiveness caused a groundswell of media attention and admiration, even in conservative Texas. Giridharadas writes in a maximalist, descriptive style that allows him to hew close to both Bhuiyan's open-heartedness and Stroman's racialized resentment, which he appeared to relinquish in his waning days on death row, moved by the interest of Bhuiyan and others. In building a close, empathetic portrait of the murderer, which includes his troubled extended family, Giridharadas convincingly argues that the rage and violence embraced by Americans like Stroman often results from constricted heartland social environments, where hard drugs (and subsequent criminal records) are easier to come by than good blue-collar jobs and racial tribalism reigns. Bhuiyan and the author seemingly concur that Stroman's legacy will be the similarly constricted lives of his children. A compelling, nuanced look at the shifting, volatile meaning of American identity in the post-9/11 era.

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April 1, 2014
Journalist Giridharadas' eloquent, bordering-on-academic examination of the 2001 xenophobic murders and attempted murder by self-described Dallas biker Mark Stroman of people he perceived as Muslims bears stark witness to ideological weaknesses woven throughout twentieth-century American culture. He closely follows events leading up to and following Stroman's rage-fueled killing spree that took place on the heels of the 9/11 attacks, including his trial, conviction, and sentencing. This rampage left two dead and Raisuddin (Rais) Bhuiyan critically injured.Giridharadas alternates between the two men's stories, including their personal histories, interviews with families and friends, and courtroom coverage. But it is by letting convicted murderer Stroman and the others speak for themselves via extensive quotes that the inconsistencies and cognitive dissonances of ideological thinking become achingly clear. The primary incongruity, alluded to in the oxymoronic subtitle, is Bhuiyan's determined, if failed, attempt to rescue Stroman from the death penalty. From murder to execution, forgiveness, personal responsibility, governmental intervention and more, there are enough dichotomies here to fuel heated book-club discussions for years.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2014

The events of 9/11 and the subsequent war against terrorism have led many to try to answer the question: What does it mean to be an American? Giridharadas (New York Times columnist; India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking) offers one answer by telling the stories of Mark Stroman, a self-described "American terrorist" in Texas and Bangladesh immigrant Raisuddin Bhuiyan, who survived one of Stroman's attacks. Bhuiyan came to the United States to fulfill the American dream, only to have his plans delayed when Stroman, a man so troubled by the 9/11 attacks that he believed he was a soldier fighting against those he perceived as anti-American, walked into Bhuiyan's store and shot him in the face. Not only did the victim survive the attack, he used the experience to become a crusader against the death penalty, and even fought to prevent Stroman's execution. VERDICT Giridharadas does an excellent job of weaving the subjects' individual and shared stories into a fascinating and compelling narrative that forces the reader to decide for themselves who is indeed the True American. Anyone seeking a poignant and nuanced look at the meeting of modern America and the Muslim world should read this book.--Michael C. Miller, Austin P.L. & Austin History Ctr., TX

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